SAP QIM Solution Brief - Differentiate Through Quality Using Exceptional Issue Management

SAP Solution Brief SAP Business Suite SAP Quality Issue Management

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Differentiate Through Quality Using Exceptional Issue Management

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Benefits

Quick Facts

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Take control of issue management processes Take control of issue management processes

Increase the quality of your goods and services, and watch customer satisfaction, regulatory compliance, and business success soar. Whether you sell goods or deliver services, high quality can be a differentiator for your business. A laser focus on quality lets partners and customers know that you care about serving them efficiently, solving problems, and earning their loyalty. The SAP® Quality Issue Management (SAP QIM) application helps you quickly identify, monitor, and analyze quality issues. The ability to integrate with other SAP and non-SAP applications gives you a comprehensive view of quality issues and triggers appropriate follow-up activities and processes.

Yet no company is perfect. Customer complaints, production problems, supplier disputes, and service disagreements can all create quality issues. When these problems arise, you need to recognize, monitor, address, and manage them – even when quality-related issues occur in discrete, far-flung parts of your organization. How can you effectively handle disparate quality issues, processes, and tools?

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Objectives

Solution

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Identify and manage new quality issues Identify and manage new quality issues Streamline issue-management processes Monitor and report on issues Analyze quality issues and activities

To help you gain visibility, SAP QIM consolidates this diverse information flow into a single source of insight. The software includes an intuitive, Web-based user cockpit. Working from the cockpit, users can create new quality tickets, work on existing quality problems, define and execute necessary activities, and document issue resolution.

Alerts about quality issues originate from many sources. Some problems are noticed by customers or suppliers, who contact you directly. Others surface through manufacturing checks or supply chain disruptions. Additional data comes from disparate sources such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, manufacturing execution systems (MES), and laboratory information management software (LIMS).

SAP QIM helps users streamline quality-issue management by organizing issues and activities into structured work lists or with workflows that push tasks to users. The work lists can be personalized according to each user’s role.

Forget using spreadsheets or juggling data from multiple systems. You only need one tool to help you efficiently manage quality issues: SAP QIM.

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Objectives

Solution

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Streamline issue-management processes Identify and manage new quality issues Streamline issue-management processes Monitor and report on issues Analyze quality issues and activities

You can build customized business rules to streamline issue processing, such as rules that automatically determine issue codes, partners, or activities relevant to a particular issue. Configure the software to automatically notify process owners when an issue arises or alert activity processors when a task appears on their work list.

To respond quickly and effectively to quality issues, you need software that lets you efficiently deal with new problems or reports. With SAP QIM, you can create standardized processes to automate issue creation and streamline processing and resolution. For example, you can design a customer complaint resolution process that includes predefined corrective and preventive actions (CAPA). You can also create an approach to handling a manufacturing nonconformance issue or a strategy for managing complaints about vendors.

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Objectives

Identify and manage new quality issues Streamline issue-management processes Monitor and report on issues Analyze quality issues and activities

Solution

Benefits

What’s more, you can configure specific use cases to match your business needs. Sample use cases can be developed for multiple types of customer complaints or CAPA processes triggered by nonconforming production. The software supports product technical complaints or inquiries in pharmaceutical industries, as well as issue resolution processes in discrete manufacturing.

Quick Facts

Enhance User Acceptance Sophisticated customization features let you personalize SAP QIM without extensive programming effort. You can redefine terminology and match data labels with terms that are common to your industry or business unit. You can even change the user interface and add individual fields to reflect the optimum process flow for your users. Individual workflows can push the information to workers, helping even occasional users work efficiently with SAP QIM. By customizing the software to match user needs, you can simplify learning and reduce time to value.

The software can also trigger issue-resolution steps from other business processes or applications. Integration between SAP QIM and other business software lets the application generate quality notifications as issues arise. With real-time visibility into quality issues and activities, you can resolve problems faster, boost regulatory compliance, and enhance product traceability.

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Objectives

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Monitor and report on issues Identify and manage new quality issues Streamline issue-management processes Monitor and report on issues Analyze quality issues and activities

Monitoring functions deliver an overview of quality issues and activities from any business software or source system. Work lists neatly summarize ongoing activities and prioritize steps for addressing outstanding issues.

Flexible Deployment Options for SAP QIM The way you manage quality issues depends on your company and industry. That’s why SAP QIM can be deployed flexibly, to work with and make the most of your existing IT systems. You can deploy the software: •• As a stand-alone application •• As an application that runs on the same instance with SAP Business Suite software •• In a side-by-side approach, where SAP QIM connects to SAP Business Suite software (such as SAP ERP) or other non-SAP software that produces data about quality issues

To give users a complete view of relevant quality issues, SAP QIM not only manages its own data, but extracts data from any integrated systems. There’s no need to replicate master data from other systems, because SAP QIM uses references to existing master records in other source systems. For example, the software collects quality notifications, defect items, and related corrective actions from the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) functionality in the SAP ERP application. SAP QIM can also extract audit issues and related activities from the audit management functionality of the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform.

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Objectives

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Analyze quality issues and activities Identify and manage new quality issues Streamline issue-management processes Monitor and report on issues Analyze quality issues and activities

and queries, helping users produce reports and comprehensive decision-support information. Users can query data describing issues and activities from all integrated ERP software.

To manage quality issues, you need to be able to analyze trends and share insight. With SAP QIM, users can perform context-sensitive analytics as they are processing a quality issue. Root-cause analysis functions help you identify quality issues before they begin.

Analytics features in the SAP QIM software help users gain further insight into issues, which can improve the resolution process. Used over the broad spectrum of quality management processes, this software can support continuous improvement and create a closed-loop quality management approach.

Dashboards deliver quick graphical summaries of quality issues and activities. This data provides a snapshot view of current problems and related activities. The software also features a launchpad that provides standard lists

SAP QIM offers a flexible framework for quality issue management. It’s the foundation for effective analysis and faster problem resolution.

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Objectives

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Solution

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Pinpoint and resolve issues quickly and effectively Pinpoint and resolve issues quickly and effectively

visibility across systems and organizational units. Staying compliant with legal requirements and industry standards is simpler when you have an integrated, global approach to managing quality issues.

Run your company faster, safer, and smarter with comprehensive, intuitive quality-issue management software from SAP. With this application, you can standardize complainthandling processes and reduce cycle times for issue processing and resolution. Integration with SAP applications automates followup functions – so you resolve quality issues quickly and effectively.

The flexible, configurable SAP software lets you customize the application to meet your precise industry and business-specific requirements with an intuitive user interface. Deploy SAP QIM as a stand-alone application or integrate it with other SAP or non-SAP software. By creating new visibility into quality-related issues, SAP QIM can help you reduce the costs of poor quality, increase customer satisfaction, and improve operational excellence.

Support for CAPA lets you avoid defects or detect problems early in the production process. The sooner you identify a quality problem – before the product gets to customers – the less costly it is to correct. You can use the software to enable new traceability, with

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Objectives

Solution

Benefits

Summary Replace nonintegrated manual methods for handling quality problems with the SAP® Quality Issue Management application. With an automated, integrated, and centralized approach to handling quality issues, you can enhance visibility, reduce the costs of poor quality, and strengthen the continuous improvement process.

Solution •• Monitoring of quality-related issues across sources and business systems •• Efficient processing of issues and actions through a role-based, Web-enabled interface •• Powerful analytic reports and contextrelated key figures •• Support for integration with SAP and non-SAP applications

Objectives •• Standardize and optimize the process of managing quality issues •• Enhance visibility into quality management processes across system borders •• Improve complaint handling and boost customer satisfaction •• Reduce product safety risks and costs •• Comply with legal regulations and industry standards •• Increase quality, enhancing corporate reputation and competitiveness

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Quick Facts

Benefits •• Improve visibility by centralizing issue management •• Support process standardization with guided processes and support for business rules •• Reduce the costs of poor quality by spotting problems earlier •• Enhance customer satisfaction by speeding up complaint management processes Learn more Call your SAP representative or visit us online at www.sap.com/manufacturing.

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